I went out to Club Passim in Harvard Square last night and heard a great concert. Hanneke Cassel was there to officially release her new CD (which I highly recommend). She’s an amazing fiddle player – one who makes playing look absolutely effortless – and a great composer. She also seems to have a lot of very talented musician friends, including “Crazy Cello Guy” Rushad, Jake Armerding (mandolin player extraordinaire), and Aoife O’Donovan (who has a gorgeous voice), all of whom played along with her last night. Definitely check her out next time she’s in your neck of the woods.
What's been on my mind lately? Read on...
When I bought my table saw used, it didn’t have some of the safety equipment a new saw would have, most importantly a splitter. A splitter is attached behind the blade and keeps the kerf (the groove left by the blade) from closing up, which, in turn, prevents the saw blade from binding up and/or burning the wood you’re cutting. Recently, I’ve been thinking of making one for my saw (especially since I made some cuts this weekend that would’ve gone much smoother with a splitter), but yesterday got a sales circular from Rockler that they were offering a new product: a new kind of splitter. More info on the product is available here. It looks like a very smart design, the reviews I’ve read are positive, and at $15, it’s not a very big risk, so I’ll probably pick one up in the next few days.
Paul Krugman has a fantastic opinion piece in the New York Times today. You can check it out here.
To summarize his point of view, with which I whole-heartedly agree: the Bush Administration has run one of the most closed (meaning least observable) governments in the history of our country, and managed to get away with some seriously evil things. “No administration since Nixon has been so insistent that is has the right to operate without oversight or accountability,” he says, and he’s right. A PATRIOT Act that allows the government to investigate and prosecute citizens in comlete secrecy, an unwillingness to abide by international law, and now a call from President Bush for people to “get off his [Rumsfeld’s] case and let him do his job.”
It’s our job to oversee the government, and, in spite of what Bush says, it’d be unpatriotic if we failed to question what’s going on.
As payment for building a set of shelves for a friend this weekend, I received four of these! Guess they’re not what most folks get excited about, but I like ’em just the same…
The shelves came out well – they’re made from nice birch plywood with a facing of birch lumber (actually, the facing has yet to go on). We routed out rabbets and dadoes for the shelves, and drilled some holes to make some of the shelves adjustable. For a big project, we made very few mistakes, and my rabbet plane saved the day when we discovered, during the gluing process, that one of the dadoes wasn’t wide enough to receive a shelf. Look for pictures soon.
I put up a little summary of my hybrid experiences ’cause it’s been just over a year since I bought my Civic. You can see it here. Summary: still happy!
I’ve been busy with plenty of projects lately, in spite of being sick. The piano bench is progressing well (I made the metal coupling between to two threaded rods last night on the lathe), I’m building some book/storage shelves with a friend on Saturday, and I’ve picked up the knitting needles again to continue work on a sweater I’ve been knitting for several years. Good thing, too, as it looks like I’ll have to give up the garage for at least a week or so in the not-so-distant future while our basement – the site of the sewage unpleasantness – is being professionally cleaned and the boxes stored therein need a temporary home.
The BUDA Summer Club Leage season has started – Love Child lost its first game (we were on the comeback trail, but it got dark) on Tuesday, and we’re having regular practices now. I’m happy to be running more!